95% of Trains Are on Time? Riders Beg to Differ

A Newark platform for New Jersey Transit, which lags other area railroads in being on time.Credit
Michael Appleton for The New York Times

By official accounts, 2009 was a banner year for the commuter railroads that serve New York City. Of all the trains that ran last year, the railroads said, nearly 96 percent were on time — one of the best performances since they began keeping records.

But the reality, as nearly any rider would tell you, can be considerably different, and vastly more frustrating.

On weekday mornings, 1 in 10 trains entering Pennsylvania Station arrived late, two-thirds by 10 minutes or more. At the peak of the rush, from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m., about 25 percent of New Jersey Transit trains entering Manhattan arrived late; about 2 in 5 of the late trains were tardy by at least 15 minutes. (The trains’ scheduled runs are a little more than an hour on average.)

These are among the findings of an examination by The New York Times of the more than 685,000 trips in 2009 involving the region’s three major commuter railroads, using records requested by The Times that had not previously been made available to the public.

The review found that the official figures for on-time performance, often used as a promotional tool, contrasted sharply with the experience of tens of thousands of passengers who regularly ride the trains at peak hours. In fact, the most important trips for daily commuters, those that can make or break breakfast with a client or dinner with a spouse, experience far more delays than the statistics may let on.

Trips to and from Penn Station during rush hours, for instance, were two and a half times as likely to be late as trips taken at any other time. The disappointment among riders can be further appreciated by considering the record of specific commuter lines. For example, morning commuters on New Jersey Transit who passed through the Summit station were late on 1 of every 6 trips, nearly a third by more than 20 minutes. And Long Island Rail Road commuters who traveled from Huntington to Manhattan at rush hour arrived late on 1 of every 10 trips, twice the average for the railroad.

Performance varies by railroad, with commuters from Connecticut and Westchester County, who ride the Metro-North Railroad, faring better than those from New Jersey and Long Island.

But on any railroad, morning routines that differ by as little as half an hour can yield great consequences on professional and personal lives: commuters who arrived in the city after 7:30 a.m. were twice as likely to be late as those who arrived between 6 and 7:30 a.m.

Transit officials do not dispute the accuracy of these numbers. But the disparity between the public claims of success and the day-to-day exasperation of many riders can be explained by the way on-time performance, as it is known in railroad parlance, is measured.

The statistic encompasses every trip a railroad makes. But only a third of those trips occur during rush hours, when the vast majority of riders use the trains. That means that quieter periods, when fewer trains are running and most trips go off without a hitch, lift the figures higher than what most commuters typically experience.

Adding to the disconnect is the fact that the railroads deem a train late only if it reaches its terminus more than 5 minutes 59 seconds after the scheduled arrival time.

In interviews, officials at the three agencies said on-time performance was an important catchall statistic to gauge the overall performance of a railroad. But they acknowledged that passengers’ experiences can vary depending on their line or time of travel.

Photo

“I plan on the six minutes extra,” said Steven Wilkins, a medical consultant who commutes daily from Long Island.Credit
Michael Appleton for The New York Times

“Customers know that hearing good numbers like a 95 percent on-time performance means that, in general, they are getting good train service,” said Helena Williams, the president of the Long Island Rail Road. “Everyone is always very focused on their individual train. They want to get from Point A to Point B without any delays.”

Dennis Boyce is one of those riders. On a recent weekday morning, Mr. Boyce, 42, a computer specialist who commutes to Manhattan from Edison, N.J., was informed by a reporter that his New Jersey Transit rush-hour train arrived late 23.7 percent of the time.

“That’s all?” Mr. Boyce said. “It feels like more than that.”

Mr. Boyce’s route, which runs twice a day between New Brunswick and Penn Station, is one of the most delay-riddled in the region. Vynni Lam, a banker from Fanwood, N.J., who was also on board, said the poor performance was a major factor when she decided to move to a nearby town served by a different line.

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Of course, even in ideal conditions, it would be nearly impossible for railroads to achieve a perfect performance when thousands of trains run on hundreds of miles of track every day.

And on-time performance has significantly improved over the last several decades; in the late 1960s, more than 20 percent of Long Island Rail Road trains ran late.

Like many trains on New Jersey Transit, which recorded the worst performance of the three railroads, Mr. Boyce’s train must pass through a two-track tunnel under the Hudson River that is shared with Amtrak.

“Even a minor delay of one train can have a cascading effect on the other trains,” said Lynn Bowersox, an assistant executive director at New Jersey Transit.

Long Island Rail Road officials said the railroad had delays at rush hour in part because of the paucity of platforms at Penn Station, which must handle dozens of trains arriving and departing each hour.

One of the slowest routes on the Long Island Rail Road is the trip from Port Jefferson to Penn Station. That train is supposed to arrive in Manhattan at 9:23 a.m., but it was recorded as being late on 1 in 6 trips, and passengers said that statistic was generous.

“I plan on the six minutes extra; it’s part of my schedule,” said Steven Wilkins, a medical consultant who has commuted daily from Stony Brook for 16 years.

That route is also hobbled by its use of diesel engines, which the railroad says have been difficult to maintain. The route also occasionally narrows to a single track, requiring trains in one direction to idle for several minutes until others have passed.

Metro-North’s lines to Connecticut and Westchester, which have the best performance in the region, benefit from having spacious Grand Central Terminal to themselves. Still, trains on the New Haven line perform worse than the others, primarily because the cars are holdovers from the 1970s and some of the track uses overhead electrical wires that are nearly a century old and prone to damage.

The confusion between the views of rider and railroad seems to stretch back to the days when mass transit began. In 1955, The Times reported that the Long Island Rail Road had quit publishing its on-time performance statistics. The reason: “People just wouldn’t believe us.”

Correction: July 29, 2010

An article on Tuesday about the time performances of the New York region’s three major commuter railroads referred imprecisely to one of the slowest routes on the Long Island Rail Road, the trip from Port Jefferson to Penn Station. While only one train on that route leaves during the morning rush — defined as 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. for the analysis in the article — that is not the only train that makes the trip on weekdays. A train leaves Port Jefferson for Penn Station at 5:44 a.m.

A version of this article appears in print on July 27, 2010, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: 95% of the Trains Are on Time? Riders and Reality Beg to Differ. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe